The Cutoff Point

The train ground to a halt, sloshing a beer resting on the sill. Foam spilled over the brim and dripped down to pool around the base. Chester watched the beer splash back and forth before settling in the glass. Screeching brakes echoed as the train fell to poignant silence among the peaks. He checked his watch and wondered about the delay. The reassuring hum of wheels on tracks had been replaced with a thick stillness draping over murmurs pierced only by the occasional clank of a dish. Outside the viewing window of the dining car, mountain peaks stood still and impenetrable. Anxiety crept up Chester’s back as he took a big swig and looked out to mountains towering beyond walls of spruce. Being late for the hearing would be the final straw for him. 

Around the dining car, a few heads swiveled on rising curious shoulders. Other passengers peered plaintively over the vista. Some grumbled. Sitting back, Chester wondered how long the stop would last. He envied the other passengers’ complacency and thought about ordering another beer but decided against it. After pondering the low sunlight reflecting off the white mountain peaks for a while, he distracted himself by reading. 

The train sat for an hour as Chester finished his book. “This is bullshit,” the man a few chairs over grumbled when Chester set his book down. Chester’s neighbor at the window was a gruff character with long wiry hair and a tan face prematurely worn from years in the sun. The brown, flat-brimmed hat he wore cast a shadow past glowing white eyes. Chester ignored the man and looked out over the trees. The adjacent peaks were no longer resplendent; a cloudy sky had hidden them from the sun. Unsatisfied with Chester’s response to his performance, the man threw a dismissive hand up and turned to his compatriot to continue the tirade. “What the hell is goin’ on?” The other man was smaller and thin. His scruffy hair was held at bay at the eyebrow line by thick-rimmed glasses.

“Prob’ly nuthin,” he replied. 

A waitress rushed by and the man in the hat interrupted her, “Miss. Why are we stopped?”

She answered him on the move, “I’m sorry sir, I don’t know.”

He called after her, “Well can I at least get off an’ smoke?”

She backed away towards the next car with down-turned, placating eyebrows, “I’m sorry, but no one is allowed off the train.”

The man turned back and hunched over the narrow bar in front of the window. “Need a damn cigarette,” he muttered. 

Chester looked around the dining car to the crossed arms, slack necks, and chins resting on hands. He decided he needed to stretch his legs. He left his book and made his way through the dining car. Chester pulled gazes—bored or curious—as he passed. 

When he crossed between cars, cold wind rushed up from the tracks and ripped around the train. Chester paused in the shear of freezing wind and held the chill sensation on his hands. He remembered the stifling heat of the courtroom and sweat pooling in the seat of his pants as he rose to be judged. The open air felt good. He braced against a violent gust and grasped the handle of the door. 

In the next car, sullen passengers slouched, crowded into cramped seats as if their contortion would provide the comfort that forever eludes the poor. The air was thick, and no one spoke or moved until Chester’s passing turned heads. He moved on in shuffling silence. The next car was the same except for the restless cooing of a small child and a mother’s desperate whispers. When Chester slid the door open, the baby began to fuss. As he slid the door shut, eyes glared at him through gaps in the rows of seats. 

Chester crossed into another car. Inside, a set of stairs led up to a raised seating area with a panoramic roof. A standing room with a bar was below. Chester followed the passage into the lower lobby. Amber lights running the length of the car washed the room in the warm shadowless glow of opulence. In the lobby, a group stood by the bar conversing over drinks; a collection of parents tried to keep adolescents entertained, and a few cells of consternation were scattered about the room. 

In the center, a group was in heated discussion. A tall man stood at the front. He was balding, with a long square face and athletic build. He wore a sportscoat and fanciful pocket square that told the world he was a man of stature on vacation. Speaking with his hands on his hips, he intermittently pointed to the ground for emphasis. “I’m telling you something is wrong!”

A petite woman spoke up in contest, “We would have felt something—a shudder or bump. We are probably just stopped for traffic.” She threw her chin high. 

The man threw his hands up. “We’re a hundred miles into the middle of nowhere. There’s no connections out here!” he shouted. 

“You can’t know that,” another blurted. 

Chester made his way through the car inspecting grim faces watching the argument. A young boy raced past him with childish abandon. The mother chased, her eyes creased in desperation, as she scolded.  

In between cars, Chester faced the rushing winds. He looked back to the group in the center of the lobby. They were all talking over each other now. Those were the kind of “rational minds” that would be judging him, he thought. He decided he would probably miss the hearing anyway. Chester brushed his jacket flat and grabbed at the icy handle of the next car. 

Before he could open the door, it slid in his grasp. Wide eyes, bright white in a sooty face, peered through him. The man wore a dark and disheveled uniform. He wasn’t wearing a cap. One of the engineers, Chester decided, and stepped aside. The engineer went by him with unfocused eyes and passed through the other door. Chester heard rising shouts from the other car as the uniformed man slid the door closed. 

In the next car, the passengers huddled around the windows on the right side. Chester stood behind them in the void and watched as heads jockeyed for a view out the high windows. Giddy and nervous whispers crawled around the train car. Heaviness welled in his stomach. Chester regarded the huddle warily. Eager breaths fogged the windows before being swiped away by frantic sleeves. Chester watched the passengers jostling for position like a throbbing wound. 

Ahead, the track curved, teasing a view at the front of the train. Chester peered through the shoulders, bobbing heads, foggy windows and trees. Fat smoke, brown like cemetery dirt, rose from the engine at the front of the train. Breathy whispers, now less hushed, shot between heads with urgent glances—the exchange of the obvious. Something was wrong. 

The other side of the car was vacant, and Chester saw drops of water appear on the window. He watched rain slap cold with growing intensity. The frigid world outside clashed against the hot angst inside the train. 

He looked back to the crowded side and out the window. Wind was thrashing at the trees, blowing them back and forth in now pelting rain. The excitement of the gazing passengers was growing as smoke rose, tossing in winds and rain. The promise of something—anything—had been made by the smoke, and the cult of the window would demand satisfaction. 

Chester looked back to the previous car and then onward to the looming smoke. He hesitated. Outside, he saw throngs streaming out of train cars further up the track. Alarm and speculation at the window reached fever pitch. The far door of the train car swung open. Cold air rushed in, along with another engineer. The passengers shouted from their posts at the window. He barked without breaking his stride, “Quiet! Quiet!” 

Beyond the web of jostling shoulders and undulating leaves and limbs, Chester saw a glowing orange flicker. 

The engineer continued, “Everybody off th…”  

An explosion shuttled the train along the tracks, sending a jolt through the floor and throwing Chester to the ground. Screams seemed a thousand feet below in Chester’s ringing ears. Roused dust tumbled lazily to rest. As he rose on his knees and elbows, the floor of the train shifted below his hands. 

Motion beyond the dust was a blur. Reflex caused him to yank his hand back and it began to throb above the dullness of disorientation. The world returned with shouting and jostling, and Chester felt a kick. He looked up to see the rushing mass of bodies. He squeezed against the wall, away from footfalls, and covered his head in the fetal position. 

Steps and kicks landed under a cacophony of panic. Chester remembered the preliminary hearing where he had been pelted with accusations and questions. Chester had looked over the empty chairs in the gallery as he answered. The stained wood of proud trees made up the desks and bars, sacrificed for the stage and the performance. Only the necessary parties had been present: attorneys, bailiff, stenographer, and judge. He was hung out to dry—a cutoff, high enough in the chain to be responsible, but not high enough to be protected. He knew he would be going down at the next hearing. 

The charge broke and Chester clamored to his feet before another rush pressed him against the wall. The crowd was streaming out the door he had come through—into the next car and out into the rain-soaked mountains and alpine cold. Fear welled in his chest. A fire raged at the front of the train, glowing in the darkening sky. More bodies streamed into the car from further up the train. Chester pushed past them. 

The next car was empty except for a couple huddled together between the rows of seats. They cried soft sobs of desperation. Chester saw trees outside the window begin to move past, but he was frozen watching the couple. The train crept forward as he pondered their mournful acceptance—they had given up. The doors at the end of the car hung open. Icy rain ripped across the gap and swirled into the passenger car. Chester watched the couple cry as he walked toward the frigid portal. Big rain, heavy like lead, attacked relentlessly on the windows. Chester left the crying couple and crossed through rushing wind between the cars as the train picked up speed. 

At the next car, he froze in the doorway. Two men stood in the lobby of another viewing car. They kicked at decorative brass bars to wrench them off the wall. A third man rifled through cabinets behind the bar. A body lay on the floor bleeding from the head. It shook limply as the car rattled on the tracks. The storm threw fury at Chester’s back. He slid the door shut. 

At the sound of the door, the men looked back to him and rose with animalistic poise. Lights flickered anxiously. Their eyes darted back and forth between him and each other. Chests heaved and then collected breaths. Chester didn’t know where he was headed, but knew he wasn’t staying in this car. Without prey the predators would soon turn on each other. Chester had already been prey once this week. After the tremendous loss of life, the public required a pound of flesh, and the company ate their own. 

Chester started through the lobby making soft, steady steps. As he walked, his gaze snapped between the men watching with feral intent. They were young and muscular beneath dark baggy work clothes; the largest had a bloodied face. The one behind the bar licked his lips. The doorway to the next car was a darkened portal of black and violent rain. Only gloom hung beyond. 

When Chester passed the men on the side of the lobby, one of them reached down and yanked the brass pipe off the wall. “Where do you think you’re going?” he spit. Chester bolted for the passage and leapt into the darkness. He slammed the door to the next car shut and heard laughter from the other side. 

Stagnant darkness hung all around him. Chester took a moment to observe. Trees raced past outside. The train screeched around a curve bringing the engine into view, half a dozen cars up. Fire whipped at the front cars of the train; in the cold, racing winds cast violent shadows. Frantic shouts emanated from further up the train and rain crashed through broken windows. The next door looked shut. The interior was a total disarray of baggage and broken seats. For a moment he was alone. Safe in an oasis, he mused as the car shook on the tracks. 

Chester remembered the day of the disaster. He was writing a report protesting the increased gas flow. His next memory was from the floor engulfed in papers. He couldn’t hear a thing. Outside his office, the chaos was reduced to snapshots of torn machinery and bodies. I could have refused, but it wouldn’t have mattered, he told himself. I’m just one link in a long line of failures. 

Another doorway beckoned in the fire dance of shadows. Chester walked along the rows of empty seats in the rattling car. When he slid the door open, icy rain blowing across the walkway glowed bright in the light of the flames. Trees streaked by in the dusk. The sound of shouting rose over the roar of winds and drumming rain. 

Chester grasped the icy door handle. It shook in his hand. He slid it open. At the far end of the car, he could see a faint huddle holding the opposite door closed. He stepped inside and listened to furious grunting. Banging on the other side of the door resonated through the car. Chester watched as the group held the door closed against desperate cries on the other side. The fire glowed bright like the sun outside the window. Here it is, the cutoff. The severed link, he thought. 

As the mid-morning sun cut into the courtroom in clean streaks, the company lawyer apologized for Chester’s actions and expressed deep regret for the tragedy as he entered the contract into evidence. Chester remembered the lawyer’s face perfectly; the small creases around his eyes, his dark hair slicked back with product, his angular chin and his bulbous Adam’s apple that jumped as he spoke with a superior tone. He didn’t even look at Chester. It wasn’t personal. “If it please the court, the contract shows that ensuring safe plant operation was the responsibility of the shift supervisor,” he said, returning to his seat. Chester watched tiny motes of dust rising and falling in the sunlight as the judge read the document with frowning aplomb. 

Chester charged through the aisle and slammed into the bodies at the door. He ripped the first away and threw his fist into the back of the head of the next. “Stop!” someone cried out, and Chester was shoved back. He pushed into the mass again. He kicked and threw his elbows wildly into the fray. He couldn’t see, could only feel the jostling heat and blows falling on him. “Hold the door!” came a shout.

“Get him outta here!” another yelled. Chester thrashed, kicking and punching, as he pulled bodies away. Blows fell on him, but he managed to stay on his feet. 

A sliver of firelight shone through the mass. Chester fought with wanton fury. The roar of fire covered the shouts, and the light grew larger as Chester was dragged to the ground. He watched flaming forms scrambling at the gap in the doorway. A blow landed on his chest, sucking the air from him. He watched the door slide wide open to reveal an inferno. 

Shrieking bodies from the other side clamored through the door, falling into the train car. The mob holding the door against the onslaught collapsed and he was swallowed by darkness. Chester was braced between the floor and the sweaty mass of a suffocating sea of grunts, pants, and shouts. A weight fell on his leg. Searing pain punched through the adrenal rush as his leg snapped below the knee. Chester clawed at clothes and limbs to escape the smothering pile. Repeated heaviness pressed down as he pulled to escape the hot bodies above him. 

His hand grasped a metal bar. He reached for it with his other hand and pulled with all his strength. Something shifted above him, and he was momentarily free. He scurried amidst searing pain as his leg was rended. He let out a guttural scream lost in the roar. 

Underneath one of the bench seats, Chester looked back to see flaming bodies falling over the scrambling pile and into the train car. The inferno licked at the doorway and smoke poured into the cabin. The car screeched on the tracks as it raced down the mountain. No one gets cut off, Chester thought before he passed out. 

***